Mark McLaughlin

A winter sunrise over the great plains of Russia is no cause for celebration. The temperature barely rises above zero, and the guards at Penal Colony IK22 are determined to take their misery out on the prisoners—chief among them, one Zoya Zakharova. Once a master spy for Russian foreign intelligence, then the partner and lover of the Gray Man, she has information the Kremlin wants, and they don't care what they have to do to get it.

Roger Ferris is one of the CIA's soldiers in the war on terrorism. He has come out of Iraq with a shattered leg and an intense mission: to penetrate the network of a master terrorist known only as "Suleiman". Ferris' plan for getting inside Suleiman's tent is inspired by a masterpiece of British intelligence during World War II: he prepares a body of lies, literally the corpse of an imaginary CIA officer who appears to have accomplished the impossible by recruiting an agent within the enemy's ranks.

When General Vladimir, a Soviet defector, is brutally murdered in London's Hampstead Heath on his way to meet a junior Circus agent, George Smiley finds himself being pulled from retirement—again. As Vladimir's former case officer, Smiley has the privilege of cleaning up and burying the the mess. But one last message from the general, sent just before he died, hints at a major operation led by spymaster Karla, Smiley's Soviet counterpart. Thrust back into the world of Cold War espionage in pursuit of his longtime nemesis, Smiley assembles a small team of trusted operatives.

Fresh off his first mission back with the CIA, Court Gentry secures what seems like a cut-and-dried contract job: A group of expats in Paris hires him to kidnap the mistress of Syrian dictator Ahmed Azzam to get intel that could destabilize Azzam's regime. Court delivers Bianca Medina to the rebels, but his job doesn't end there. She soon reveals that she has given birth to a son, the only heir to Azzam's rule - and a potent threat to the Syrian president's powerful wife. Now, to get Bianca's cooperation, Court must bring her son out of Syria alive.

Sam McCready has served with distinction for seven years as chief of the cover operations desk of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, a post that is the culmination of a brilliant career as an inventive and intrepid field agent. But times have changed. A high-level policy decision demands that the SIS strip away its old-style operatives, and the first to be targeted for retirement is the freewheeling McCready.

Becoming one of the US Forest Service’s elite smokejumpers has been Jake Slade’s dream. Parachuting into the path of a raging fire and beating it into submission isn’t a job for the faint of heart, but after four years in Folsom, he’s ready to prove himself. After surviving the grueling six-week training course, he thinks he’s ready for anything nature has to dish out.

Meet Victor. He's an assassin - a man with no past and no surname. He lives alone. He operates alone. He's given a job; he takes out the target; he gets paid. He's The Killer. Victor arrives in Paris to perform a standard kill and collect for an anonymous client. He completes it with trademark efficiency - only to find himself in the middle of an ambush and fighting for his life.

When Alexander the Great died at the age of 32, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea in the west all the way to modern-day India in the east. In an unusual compromise, his two heirs - a mentally damaged half brother, Philip III, and an infant son, Alexander IV, born after his death - were jointly granted the kingship. But six of Alexander's Macedonian generals, spurred by their own thirst for power and the legend that Alexander bequeathed his rule "to the strongest," fought to gain supremacy.

Josh Duffy and his wife Nikki are both working for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service providing protection for diplomats in the field. They've been sent to Ghana with a team of US embassy personnel who are there to highlight American commitment to the construction of a new dam. Since Ghana is a stable democracy, the Duffy children have come along for a short vacation. But stability proves to be fleeting when a Chinese plan to embarass the US means the destruction of the dam

Someone is killing the world's leading experts on robotics and computers. A desperate Russian scientist approaches Court Gentry and Zoya Zakharova to ask for their protection, but before they can help, they are attacked by a team of professional assassins. They escape, but wherever they turn, it's clear that whoever's tracking them is always going to be one step ahead. With a danger of this level, there's no choice but to attack into the threat.